


Patterns

by wilddragonflying



Series: Fallout Fic [10]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: The story of Kaili's great-niece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:21:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilddragonflying/pseuds/wilddragonflying
Summary: Meet Rebecca, Kaili's great-niece





	Patterns

_The Capital Wasteland, 2075_

“Hey, didja hear?”

Rebecca glances up at the question, raising one eyebrow at Danse. “Hear what?”

“The Brotherhood’s recruiting.” Danse looked like a child presented a rare piece of junk to sell; it was rather endearing, if Rebecca was honest with herself.

“So?”

“So, Cutler and I are going to join.”

Rebecca blinks. “Join… the Brotherhood?” Sure, she’d heard of the Brotherhood – you had to be living under a rock not to have – but she’s never thought about joining them before. It had to be better than scraping by in this godforsaken town, but what would the cost be?

“Yeah,” Danse says, still enthusiastic as he launches into a spiel he had to have heard from a recruiter. Rebecca listens with only half an ear as she thinks, and by the time Danse is winding down, she’s made her decision.

“I’m joining with you.”

* * *

“Hey, Danse – look at this.”

The Knight made his way over, Power Armor helmet obscuring his facial expression and changing the pitch of his voice. “What have you found?”

“It’s a record of a prewar soldier who was entered into Vault Tec’s program, in the Commonwealth, to the north of here. The thing is, I’ve heard this name before – my great-grandmother used to talk about her sister, Kaili Swesson. I think this is her.”

Rebecca moved to the side as Danse bent down to examine the records she’d found. “You might be right; the records fit. Most of the Vaults have failed; you can’t think she’s still alive.”

“No,” Rebecca admits, downloading all of the terminal’s information onto a holotape. “But she might have descendants – some of the Vaults didn’t fail, and continued to survive until now. It’s just odd, thinking that maybe I’ve still got family somewhere.”

“The Brotherhood is your family, Becca.” Rebecca blinks in surprise; Danse hasn’t used her nickname since they joined the Brotherhood. Danse seems to catch on to his slip up, because he shifts his stance in the same way he always does when he’s embarrassed about something; Power Armor can’t hide that. “You don’t need to wonder, is all I meant. You’ve got a new family here, one that will have your back no matter what. That’s what the Brotherhood does.”

Rebecca did her best to keep her expression from twisting as disappointment and bitterness welled in her chest, clawing at her throat. “Of course,” she mutters, turning her back on Danse under the guise of storing the holotape in her bag. She used to have a family before the Brotherhood, too – she’d followed them into this new life, had hoped it’d be a better life for them, and that maybe…

Well,  _that_  hadn’t happened, and now, with Danse’s newfound fanaticism about the Brotherhood, it probably never would.

* * *

Rebecca found Danse in a forgotten corner of the Citadel after the battle to destroy the Adams Air Force Base. Cutler had died a few years earlier, executed by Danse after having been forcibly exposed to the FEV, leaving his two best friends behind, and one them even more devoted to the Brotherhood’s idealogy of eradicating mutants and ghouls.

The newly-promoted Paladin was sitting on the floor in just his bodysuit, the under-armor he used when in his suit of Power Armor. The helmet cap was on the ground beside him, and Rebecca carefully picked it up, brushing some dust off of it before she settled down beside Danse, close enough that their arms brushed. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. Paladin Kreig had been their mentor, but the older Paladin had always had a soft spot for Danse – though he’d hidden it by pushing Danse harder than he pushed anyone else. It would make a great soldier out of the younger man, but Rebecca knew that sometimes it confused him; Danse greatly admired their mentor.

Danse doesn’t say anything for several moments, but eventually he leans more heavily against Rebecca, who wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Can’t believe he’s gone,” Danse mutters, head dropping to lean against Rebecca’s shoulder. “After everything he’s done – for us and the Brotherhood… He’s just, not coming back.”

Rebecca rubs Danse’s shoulder comfortingly. “I know. I’ll miss him, too – but he died fighting for a good cause, and we won today. He’d be proud of you, you know.”

Danse snorts. “Maybe. He never seemed like he trusted me, much.”

“He trusted you more than the rest of us,” Rebecca argues. “He pushed you so hard because he believed in you, that you could rise to the challenge and surpass it. He saw what I see, Danse, that you’re a good man, a good soldier, and one day, you’ll be a good leader.”

“I don’t feel like a good  _anything_  right now,” Danse admits in a mutter, and Rebecca gives in to the urge to wrap both of her arms around the other soldier and pull him into a hug.

“You’re all of that and more,” she promises. “Maybe you don’t feel like it right now, but that’s why you’ve got me. I’ll remind you every day for as long as you need me to. Paladin Kreig believed in you, and I do, too.”  _I love you,_  she thinks, but she hasn’t said it out loud once since the day she realized it when they were fourteen, and she’s not going to say it today.

They stay like that for hours.

* * *

Rebecca, now promoted to Paladin in the years since the assault on Adams Air Force Base, watches with wide eyes through the glass windows of the command deck of the Prydwen, not paying any attention to the message being blared from the airship’s speakers. The Commonwealth – formerly the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, back before the Great War – lay below, a barren wasteland. Not that the Capital Wasteland was any better, but somehow, she’d managed to forget what the wastelands truly looked like when she wasn’t looking at them through the lenses of a Power Armor helmet.

“Paladin Nelson.”

Rebecca jumped to attention, focusing back inside the deck to find Elder Maxson approaching her. “Yes, sir?”

“I’ve received your request for leave; you wish to investigate the reports you found of a Vault to the northwest of our intended touchdown?”

“Yes, sir,” Rebecca answers. “You and I both know the intended purpose behind the Vaults, and the reports I found indicated that there were more – modern – parties interested in this particular Vault.”

“Vault 111.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mason was quiet for a moment before nodding. “Very well – I am not granting you leave, but I am allowing you to take your recon team to investigate the Vault. Make sure to take a couple of Scribes with you, to record anything you might find.”

Rebecca snapped out a salute. “Understood, sir.”

“Good. Dismissed, Paladin.”

* * *

Rebecca was kept busy organizing her team for the next several days, and the day they were due to leave, Paladin Danse returned to the Prydwen with a new Initiate in tow. As was custom, the mentor left the Initiate with the Elder for a confidential meeting; Rebecca met him in the mess hall. “It’s good to see you, Danse,” is her greeting, warmth infusing her tone. In a heartbeat, however, she’s reached out to slug him in the shoulder; she’s wearing her own Power Armor, and leaves a sizable dent in his. “What the hell were you thinking? You should have had at least five more men on that recon mission!”

“Ow! Damn it, Rebecca, you knew we couldn’t spare the men for that, and besides, we’d have been spotted right away!”

“You already were, you moron!”

“We couldn’t have known that!”

Rebecca ignores the snickers of the gathered onlookers as she seethes, glaring at Danse. “Fine. I’m not arguing this with you; who did you bring back?”

Danse’s expression breaks out into a grin. “You’re not going to believe me until you see for yourself. Remember when you found out that you might have family up here?”

It takes Rebecca a moment to place what Danse is getting at. “Yeah, back after we were both promoted to Knight,” she says slowly. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I found a relative of yours.”

Rebecca’s about to ask what the hell Danse means when a voice – a voice that Rebecca has heard before, on holotape recordings – interrupts. “Good God, I hope I won’t have to interact with him too much; I might end up giving him a nice, shiny new bruise.”

Rebecca looks over Danse’s shoulder to get a look at the newcomer, and her mouth drops open in shock. “Kaili Swesson? You found  _Kaili Swesson?_ ”

“Technically, she found me,” Danse says with a grin. “Saved my team from a horde of feral ghouls, her and her dog, Dogmeat – where is he, anyway?”

“Hopefully pissing on Maxson’s bed. Hi, I’m guessing you know me?” Kaili – it had to be her, even with the new scar that ran from her scalp, over her left eye, and down to her jaw, possibly from a deathclaw – answers, turning from Maxson to look at Rebecca appraisingly. Kaili’s skin is darker than Rebecca’s, partly naturally, and partly from exposure, and her hair is raven’s-wing black where Rebecca’s is deep red, pulled into a messy bun where Rebecca’s is neatly gathered at the base of her skull. She doesn’t seem to be wearing any makeup; Rebecca has never given up her guilty indulgence of the stuff.

“Yes, sorry – you wouldn’t know me, but my great-grandmother was your sister.” Rebecca watches carefully as Kaili’s brow furrows slightly before her whole expression turns to one of shock.

“Marlene? She survived the bombs?” Kaili’s expression looks desperate, and she takes a step towards Rebecca, who moves out of the way before opening the Power Armor so that she can meet Kaili – who is wearing a set of road leathers that have obviously been patched several times over – in a more personal way.

“She did,” Rebecca confirms. “The radiation turned her into a ghoul, but she survived another seventy years before she went feral. Had my grandmother, who had my mother, who had me.”

Kaili’s expression falls when Rebecca mentions the fact that Marlene went feral. “Was it quick, at least – when she got put down?”

“It was. Her son-in-law did it; one bullet was all it took. Some of the ghouls from that day on 2077 went feral quickly, they were exposed to too much radiation. She knew the signs, knew what was happening, and she got him to do it before she hurt anyone.”

Kaili’s smile is sad. “That sounds like her. Where did you grow up?”

“In the Capital Wasteland; joined the Brotherhood with Danse. Where – how did you survive?”

Kaili’s expression shadows. “Vault 111, up the hill from Sanctuary Hills, where I used to live, was to be used as an experiment on ‘the effects of cryogenic stasis on unsuspecting individuals,’” she answers, sounding as though she’s quoting something. “We went in the day the bombs dropped – actually saw the one hit to the southwest of here, saw the cloud and everything – and were put into cryostasis. I woke up at one point, and found some people I suspect to be Institute agents trying to take my baby nephew. My husband, Nate – he wouldn’t give them Shaun, and he was killed for that. I recently found the bastard who pulled the trigger on him, and now I’m going to find Shaun, too.”

Cryogenesis – Christ. “So you’re trying to find your son?”

Kaili nods. “And somehow, along the way, I adopted a ragtag group of settlers and – I’m still not sure how it happened – became the General of the Minutemen. Oh, that reminds me,” she adds, turning back to Danse. “We’re planning to retake the Castle; if you’re up for it, since Maxson told me that you’ll need to accompany me as my ‘mentor,’ we could sure use your laser minigun. Way I hear it, some monster, maybe a Mirelurk of some kind, just climbed out of the sea and ran them all out.”

Danse shakes his head. “If the Minutemen had been more organized – “

“Yeah, well, they weren’t, and since I’m General now, I’m working on fixing that,” Kaili snaps; it’s obviously a sore point for her.

Danse blinks, and Rebecca grins. She  _likes_  her great-great-aunt. “All right,” Danse says after a moment. “I’ll come with you.”

Kaili gives him a sunny smile. “Great! We can go now; Dogmeat!”

There’s an assenting bark from the other end of the Prydwen – the end with Maxson and Kells’s quarters – and the scrabble of nails on metal, and in a moment a handsome German Shepherd appears, tongue lolling in a doggy grin as he trots to Kaili’s side, giving himself a shake and resettling the bandana about his neck. “Good boy,” Kaili coos, bending down to fuss over him for a moment before she straightens again. “Let’s take a vertibird; I need to go to Sanctuary, grab Preston and let him know to put the word out that we’re retaking the Castle, and then we can meet everyone there.”

* * *

The attack on the Castle is successful, although all of the participants end up with mirelurk blood and guts in some unpleasant places. Rebecca takes her team from the Castle back to the Prydwen to resupply before she goes to Sanctuary and Vault 111. Rebecca keeps her team in the front rooms only, away from the cryogenic pods for the moment out of respect for the deceased, especially Kaili’s husband.

Rebecca is impressed by the state of Sanctuary – all of the prewar houses have been torn down and replaced with some rather impressive structures. There are several industrial water purifiers in the river, and an extensive farming plot has been set up. The whole thing is surrounded by concrete walls topped with missile turrets placed at regular intervals.

“Pretty impressive, ain’t it?” Hancock – mayor of Goodneighbor, ghoul, and, if rumor is to be believed, current paramour of Kaili – asks when Rebecca comes down from the Vault to buy some supplies. “Everybody pitched in to buy the concrete for the walls, which was a hell of a reassurance in and of themselves, and Kaili found the parts for the turrets when she was out exploring the Commonwealth. Nothing gets past those walls, and if they could, they’d be met with – “

The ground shakes as a creature, huge and white and reptilian, rounds the corner, head lifted to scent the air. “Holy – “ Rebecca reaches for her gun off of instinct, regretting leaving her power armor up the hill at the Vault, but Hancock stops her.

“That’s Pipsqueak.”

“ _Pipsqueak_? That’s a fucking albino alpha deathclaw! What the hell is it doing here?”

“Kaili brought her in; she was there when Pipsqueak hatched, and apparently deathclaw hatchlings imprint. Kaili raised her here in Sanctuary, and now Pipsqueak thinks of everyone here as her pack. Don’t do anything she can interpret as an act of aggression, and she’ll leave you alone. Oh, and she does have a hatchling of her own, who also imprinted on Kaili. His name’s Larry, and he’s a chameleon.”

“Great,” Rebecca says faintly. “My great-great aunt, the Deathclaw tamer.”

“And rider.”

“ _Rider_?”

“Yep. Here, lemme show you the harness she and Sturges have been working on; she’s got reins and everything that attach to the horns.”

Rebecca followed the ghoul, mind whirring. She was  _definitely_  recommending that Sanctuary be left alone in the future.


End file.
